PCI-SIG Releases PCI Express 2.0 Specification to Members for Review and Continues Innovation on the PCI Express Technology

PCIe Base 2.0 Specification Scales the Transfer Rate to 5GT/s; Future Protocol Extensions to Comprehend Emerging Applications

PORTLAND, Ore. -- October 09, 2006 --PCI-SIG®, the Special Interest Group responsible for the ubiquitous PCI Express® industry-standard I/O architecture, announced today that it has made the release candidate (revision 0.9) of its PCI Express Base 2.0 specification available for review by member companies. With work on this specification nearly complete, PCI-SIG assigned its technical workgroups to investigate and develop the scope for potential extensions of the PCI Express protocols to meet future requirements, such as improved dynamic power controls, optimized synchronization, coherency hints, and more efficient transaction ordering.

These enhancements will be evaluated for possible inclusion in a collection of incremental extensions to the PCI Express architecture intended to improve the range of design options available to emerging markets and computing models. The affected technical workgroups have issued a call for new membership and will study future extensions such as, but not limited to, those within the recent Geneseo proposal from PCI-SIG member companies. These technical workgroups, which are open to all members of the organization, will solicit input from other member companies and recommend future directions to enhance the PCI Express protocols.

PCIe 2.0 Specifications

PCI-SIG has released the 0.9 version of the PCIe Base 2.0 specification for member review and comment. This specification extends the data rate of PCIe to 5GT/s in a manner compatible with the existing PCIe 1.1 specifications that support 2.5GT/s signaling. There are a number of improvements made to the protocol and software layers of the architecture— a product of more than three years of design experience by the PCI-SIG members. A companion Card Electromechanical (CEM) 2.0 specification is also currently in review at 0.5 by the PCI-SIG members.

“PCI-SIG is pleased with the impressive progress in the proliferation of the PCI Express technology by our members,” said Al Yanes, PCI-SIG chairman. “We are committed to providing a compelling technology roadmap for our flagship PCI Express architecture. With the release of PCIe Base 2.0 for member review, we look forward to new protocol improvements, and IOV and PCIe Cable specifications.”

I/O Virtualization and PCIe Cable Specifications

Continuing ongoing specification development, PCI-SIG working groups are completing the suite of specifications to enable I/O device virtualization and sharing. The draft Address Translation Services (ATS) 0.9 specification has been released for member review. The Single-Root and Multi-Root device sharing specifications are in various stages of development and will be released to members for review in the near future.

The PCIe Cable specification has been released to members at revision 0.9 for 60-day review. The new specification supports cables up to 10 meters in length running at 2.5 Gb/s. Cable assemblies have already been measured and validated by the workgroups. The specification will primarily be implemented in disaggregated I/O and backplane usage models. PCI-SIG has decoupled this specification from the PCIe 2.0 specification (5.0 GT/s) and anticipates the final version of the cable specification to be ready by year-end 2006.

About PCI-SIG

PCI-SIG is the Special Interest Group that owns and manages PCI specifications as open industry standards. The organization defines and implements new industry standard I/O (Input/Output) specifications as the industry's local I/O needs evolve. The PCI Special Interest Group was formed in 1992, and the organization became a nonprofit corporation, officially named “PCI-SIG” in the year 2000. Currently, more than 850 industry-leading companies worldwide are active PCI-SIG members. PCI-SIG's current directors are employed by the following PCI-SIG member companies: AMD, ATI, Broadcom, HP, IBM, Intel, LSI Logic, Microsoft and nVIDIA. For more information about PCI-SIG, and PCI-SIG membership benefits, contact PCI-SIG by phone, at 503-619-0569, or by fax at 503-644-6708, or visit the PCI-SIG web site at: www.pcisig.com